My First Tweet Up, I Now See The Point of Twitter.

I attended my very first "tweet up" in Belleville last week. I was invited by fellow Century 21 agent from nearby Picton Jason Young . I was very curious to learn more about this phenomenon.

For those of you don't know what a "tweet up" is, the concept is pretty simple. It's a gathering of all the local twitter users in one place. I was very glad that Jason would be there and I was also very happy that this event was being held in a pub, The Winchester Arms. I was half-way expecting this event to be like some sort of Star-Trek convention, except maybe geekier. If worst came to worst I could hide behind Jason, have a couple of Guinnesses and then leave.

Alas, they serve no Guinness at the Winchester Arms, however, I enjoyed myself tremendously, and I was glad I went. I learned a lot about Twitter that night.

I have had a Twitter account (very under-used) for some time now. I could not see how it was useful at all for the purposes of business. To me it was just a large platform, used by millions of people all over the world who spewed random micro-blogs (140 characters maximum) about topics of little or no interest to me. I wondered who would be reading any of my tweets and why I would read anybody else's.

This seeming randomness was confirmed everytime I logged into my Twitter account. It worried me a little bit. There's a section called Similar to C21malcolm (that's me), which presumably directs users to other Twitter users who are similar to myself. There's a little description about those users. Here are some descriptions of the people that Twitter deems similar to myself.

BLUE EYES, SEXY BRUNETTE & IMMA TOTAL SWEETHEART BUT I LOVE MY FRIENDS AND JUST LOVE TO SMILE AND LAUGH!3

i am tough but sweet at the same time.. Not ur ordinary type of girl, i'm sO beyond EXTRAORDINARY.. truly a one of a kind ANIME girl..that's me!

#TeamBisexual #TeamHomo #TeamFemme #TeamFollowBack

15 years old, stoner, super taylord and ilove metal, oh yeaa and if***ing love Bring Me The Horizon Damn it feels good taa be a TAYLOR

I need Twitter followers anyway, so I follow them. I'm obviously not terribly fussy. While I'm happy to be compared to RemaxBelize, RemaxFrance, and some other Twitter users, I couldn't see how some of those others would be accurately placed in my demographic. I guess IMMA TOTAL SWEETHEART, AND I AM RATHER FOND OF MY FRIENDS AND SMILING AND LAUGHING!3 IS ALSO ALRIGHT WITH ME AND BEFORE THE GREY SET IN, I WAS MORE OR LESS A BRUN(ETTE) AND I WILL LEAVE IT UP TO YOU TO DECIDE WHETHER I'M SEXY OR NOT. (I won't comment on the others).

Anyhow, I met all kinds of people at the Tweetup. Local people with physical bodies, business people, advertising people, web design people, a local provincial politician, and numerous other people who actually shook my hand. We talked about local matters, and we all left with the promise to follow one another on Twitter. It was very much like being a part of a community. The dark ale that they served in place of Guinness wasn't half-bad either.

Now I have signed up for a Twitter application called Tweetdeck, which will help me sort out the mounds of gibberish on Twitter and alert me to when someone local tweets something. This way I can easily start a conversation with them and get to know them a lot better. I am thinking that I will be able to worm my way into their consciences, consciousnes , minds and that when they start thinking about real estate matters, they will know who to turn to. By then, I will be a trusty Twitter friend. In fact, I will be able to sort all kinds of things out with Tweetdeck, it doesn't all have to be about real estate, there's other sides to me too. The next time I want to hang out with 15 year olds and get stoned or want to bring someone the horizon, I know exactly who to turn to thanks to the sorting abilities of Tweetdeck.

If anybody is puzzled by Twitter, find a local Tweetup, and get to know some of the people in your area who have figured it all out. They are really not all that geeky, and you might make some low-maintenance friends.

Thanks for sharing, I guess you have the same people following as We have on our Tweet account, (blue eyes etc).;0)

we need to still get to understand the real benefit and use of it all, for anything else but sending out our blog posts via twitter, linkd in and face book, we currently are not using these much for actual hands on use.....

I think it’s going to be a long time before I am a Twit. Facebook is bad enough, but then to do what Facebook does in just 140 characters is really odd. Just looking at the descriptions of people similar to you is enough for me.

Malcolm, thanks for clearing up the fact that Tweet Ups are NOT like Trekkie conventions in any way, shape or form...that would have closed the door for me in a heartbeat! There was just a local Tweet Up in my area...maybe I'll "think about" going to one in the future. Just maybe. :)

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